Barna has put out the results from a survey of American beliefs, and it bewilders me.
• A majority of U.S. adults adopted a biblical answer on only 1 of 7 questions about humanity and only
1 of 7 questions about the supernatural.
• Only 57% of adults believe humans are God’s creation, made in His image, fallen, and in need of
redemption—despite 70% identifying as Christian.
• Just 30% of adults hold the biblical view that people are born into sin and can only be saved by Jesus
Christ. Among Catholics, that figure drops to 24%.
• Only 1 in 4 adults (27%) believes human life is sacred. An equal share says human life has no intrinsic
value.
• A majority of Americans (52%) consider abortion morally acceptable—and only 1 in 3 adults (33%)
describes themselves as passionately pro-life.
• Only half of U.S. adults (50%) believe God is the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe
who rules it today—down from a clear majority at the start of the millennium.
• One in four adults strongly agrees that Jesus Christ sinned while on Earth. Among Notional Christians,
roughly half of all churchgoers, more strongly agreed He sinned than strongly disagreed.
• By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Americans are more likely to firmly believe the Holy Spirit is merely a
symbol than to strongly affirm the Holy Spirit as a living entity.
• Twice as many adults strongly agree that animals, plants, wind, and water have unique spirits (35%) as
strongly disagree (16%).
• Nine out of 10 American adults hold Syncretism (not Biblical Theism) as their dominant worldview
• A majority of U.S. adults adopted a biblical answer on only 1 of 7 questions about humanity and only
1 of 7 questions about the supernatural.
What is a “biblical answer”? I don’t think there is such a thing — the Bible is a tremendous hodge-podge of archaic, conflicting, and fuzzy ideas. This is an assumption that there is a clear “biblical” position on everything, so I’m unsurprised that there is an absence of a coherent response. The survey returned results that don’t match Barna’s presupposition of what Americans should believe.
• Only 57% of adults believe humans are God’s creation, made in His image, fallen, and in need of
redemption—despite 70% identifying as Christian.
57% is still too damn high. I’m curious as to what the 43% believe.
• Just 30% of adults hold the biblical view that people are born into sin and can only be saved by Jesus
Christ. Among Catholics, that figure drops to 24%.
That’s just a fundamentally horrible belief. What is sin? What is it that a newborn is a sinner? I’m happy to see that belief is in decline.
• Only 1 in 4 adults (27%) believes human life is sacred. An equal share says human life has no intrinsic
value.
I believe that human life is valuable and should be protected, but I don’t believe in the “sacred,” so I guess I’m in the majority. A lot of people are becoming cynical if they think life has no intrinsic value.
• A majority of Americans (52%) consider abortion morally acceptable—and only 1 in 3 adults (33%)
describes themselves as passionately pro-life.
The pro-life movement has always been nothing but an ideological game that was ginned up in the 1970s. The Bible doesn’t say much of anything about abortion, and basically takes it for granted that it happens. Is this one of the things they score as a “non-biblical answer”?
• Only half of U.S. adults (50%) believe God is the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe
who rules it today—down from a clear majority at the start of the millennium.
Good. Let’s see that number continue it’s decline. The concept of an ominipotent supernatural agent is nonsensical.
• One in four adults strongly agrees that Jesus Christ sinned while on Earth. Among Notional Christians,
roughly half of all churchgoers, more strongly agreed He sinned than strongly disagreed.
I’ve never even thought about this idea! Why would anyone care about the sin-status of a rabble-rousing Jewish preacher who lived 2000 years ago? Apparently it’s a serious theological question, which is an indictment of theology.
• By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Americans are more likely to firmly believe the Holy Spirit is merely a
symbol than to strongly affirm the Holy Spirit as a living entity.
Don’t you suspect that most people are confused about this whole business of a “holy ghost”? I know I was only exposed to the concept of the trinity as a grade school child, and found it absurd, so I’m sure theology has a more “sophisticated” muddle of excuses, but I suspect most Americans have the equivalent of my childish explanation.
To be a good Christian, must one believe in a nebulous space ghost?
• Twice as many adults strongly agree that animals, plants, wind, and water have unique spirits (35%) as
strongly disagree (16%).
“Spirits.” Stop there. When your survey is treating spirits as discrete entities that need to be evaluated, you’re lost.
• Nine out of 10 American adults hold Syncretism (not Biblical Theism) as their dominant worldview
OK, good. Ken Ham is thus rebuked.
I read the whole paper, and I’m mainly confused about why we should consider it significant that American religious belief is complicated and messy and does not conform to one particular view. There are tens of thousands of protestant denominations! I guess it’s nice that Barna is highlighting how incoherent religious belief is.
I got a little turned around on the juxtaposition of “sacred” and “intrinsic value”. I for one don’t think very much in terms of sacred versus profane. But there is something to that aspect of Kant’s categorical imperative, where people are treated more as ends in themselves over being means to an end. That may have been an early point of contention of Critical Theory as it addressed instrumentality. Capitalism commodifies everything and reduces people to mere means, cogs, or tools.
I’m not much into “spirits” or spirituality, but from a cognitive standpoint find “daemons” an interesting metaphor. Blame BSD Unix and an episode of Mr. Robot for that quirk. Or Pantera who famously screamed “By demons be driven!”.
And yet people still use Christian as a synonym for virtuous.
The bible was written over many centuries by multiple authors. The current version probably was written over 1,500 years.
Everything in it changes and evolves over time.
God starts out as barely above a human in powers and just one god among many. A tribal Hebrew god. He evolves into a powerful abstract spirit and then becomes the Trinity as other gods are added to the Hebrew pantheon.
The same thing happens with satan.
He starts out as one of god’s friends and angels and morphs when Zoroastrian ideas are adopted by xianity.
Same with the universe, which starts out small and flat and eventually gets larger.
Xianity itself is a syncretic religion.
It is based on Judaism with a lot of Roman Pagan, Zoroastrian, Greek, European Pagan, and Egyptian influences mixed in.
I’ll add here that a huge amount of what American xians believe isn’t even in the bible.
To take just one central idea, just about everything about satan is a modern invention.
Satan doesn’t rule in hell.
He isn’t even in hell. He was last seen living in Los Angeles.
There was no War in Heaven. Satan was never cast out of heaven either.
That came from Milton.
His name isn’t Lucifer.
Satan also never rode a tank, have a General’s rank, nor did he kill the Tsar.
George Barna is a fundamentalist evangelical. He defines his terms on that basis. Yes it is cherry picking.
Christians are all over the map. You’ve got those for whom “Christian” is merely a label with no content — they’re Christian because so are their family and most of the neighbours, so that’s what’s comfortable, may or may not attend church much, and their actual beliefs probably qualify them for Barna’s “Syncretist” category. Even among self-identified evangelicals, there are probably a lot who are in it for social-emotional motivations, and have only the vaguest ideas about doctrine. (Except that abortion is bad, so is trans, and Trump is the greatest president ever. Note that none of those are in the Bible, at least not in any clear way).
“• Nine out of 10 American adults hold Syncretism (not Biblical Theism) as their dominant worldview.”
I didn’t know those were the only two choices. Never heard of Syncretism before, had to look it up. I guess I don’t have a worldview.